Russia at war 1941-1945

[One of the few references to Jewish partisans is to be found in Ehrenburg's Memoirs. He met in Lithuania, in 1944, a partisan band of 500 young Jews (men and women) who had escaped from the Vilno ghetto. (Novyi Mir, No. 3, 1963).]

Did most of the Jews not even try to escape their fate, or did the partisans not want them?

Or were they—apart from these few doctors—already wholly isolated—or dead—by the

time the partisan movement got into its stride?

The first partisan units were formed in the occupied parts of the RSFSR and in Belorussia in 1941 in a variety of ways. Thus, one of the first partisan units formed at Polotniany Zavod near Kaluga lasted from October 11, 1941, to January 19, 1942. It was first

composed of an anti-paratroop "destroyer" battalion; then it was joined by escaped Russian war prisoners; during the three months of the Battle of Moscow, it attacked

German road columns. Finally, betrayed to the Germans by a traitor, it was more or less exterminated.

No doubt some of the partisan stories in the Glukhov book read rather too much like

Cowboys-and-Red-Indians stuff. It was all very well for the partisans to attack a German headquarters and break up their Christmas party with a few hand grenades; but it was often the villagers who suffered most from such escapades:

On January 17, 1942, in the village of Vesniny, there was a rough engagement

between partisans and Germans. The Germans lost a few dozen men, killed or

wounded. But they then started encircling the village. The partisans, having run out of ammunition, pulled out. The Germans then took their revenge. In two days 200

people, mostly women and children, were shot.

[Glukhov, op. cit., p. 38]

Similarly, other villages suspected of partisan sympathies were dealt with with special savagery. At Rasseta 372 people were killed; at Dolina, 469, again mostly women and

children.

[Ibid., p. 87.]

The deportation of villagers and the shooting of villagers by the Germans, ostensibly for

"partisan sympathies" is an ever-recurring theme. In the Kaluga province alone, 20,000

civilians were shot, according to this book. Near Briansk, in the Ludinovo and Dyatkovo districts the Germans (and Hungarians) killed, up to November 1942, 2,000 civilians and burned down 500 houses. 5,000 civilians were deported as slave labour. Owing to this

"scorched earth" policy, the Briansk partisans had a particularly hard winter in 1942-3.

But with supplies coming from the "mainland" in the spring of 1943, things began to look up for them, and, in the following summer, the Briansk partisans were preparing for their all-out Rail War. As the Red Army was approaching Orel, they also issued "last

warnings" to "traitors" (there are facsimiles of the leaflets in Glukhov's book)—the starostas, burgomasters, Russian policemen and "legionaries" (apparently Vlasovites), giving them a last chance to turn their weapons against the Germans by joining the

partisans. Some, but not very many, did. (Many, not unnaturally, suspected a trap.)

More harrowing even than the numerous "Oradours" and "Lidices" in the Kaluga-Orel-Briansk provinces, described in Glukhov's book, are those destroyed in the Osveia and Rossony districts in northern Belorussia in March 1943. This was partisan country; and although the German punitive expedition failed to trap the partisans, they occupied for a time the Osveia district. When, after forty days' fighting, the partisans returned to their base, they found that the Germans had burned down 158 villages. All able-bodied men

had been deported as slaves and all the women, children and old people murdered.

When the partisans returned, there were corpses everywhere. Only those who had

followed the partisans had survived. Many thousands had been murdered.

[ Iz istorii partiz. dvizh. v Belorussii, p. 46.]

The troops of the punitive expeditions were usually composed of German regulars, or SD

and SS troops, sometimes with an admixture of Cossacks, German-appointed policemen,

and even Slovaks. Some of these, as well as some Cossacks, went over to the partisans in a few cases.

The atrocities committed against both captured partisans and allegedly pro-partisan

peasants and their families must rank among the worst atrocities committed by the

Germans and their stooges, and that is saying something.

Few of these Partisan stories are well-written, and the themes are nearly always the same.